Using songs to build awareness of global citizenship issues

This session explored how songs focusing on global citizenship issues (including social, political, environmental & economic concerns) can be employed in the ELT classroom in order to build students' awareness of what is occurring in the world around them.

Summary

Teenagers and young people generally spend a great deal of time listening to music. Songs then (and crucially their lyrics) offer huge potential in the language classroom for exploring issues relating to global citizenship.

Chris Walklett offered suggestions as to how to tap into this resource for use in the English language classroom, putting forward ideas as to which songs could be used to explore such issues and how teachers might best employ what they have to offer.

The issue of whether any subject is too taboo to be discussed or indeed whether to use songs with controversial themes/language at all was addressed.

About the presenter

Chris Walklett is an educator, historian, ELT teacher, teacher trainer and author. He has been using music & songs in the classroom for many years dating back to his very first lesson in the mid-1990s. A lover of music both for energy and relaxation, its educational use is also something that is dear to his heart. Chris runs Tracks, which is made up of Training Tracks, both live and online bespoke teacher training course, and is also the author of the Teaching Tracks series of books. Both explore the multitudinous uses that this resource offers in the ELT, and other, classrooms.